Huff Post.
Many countries and courts have taken action over the past decade to regulate, restrict or ban the use of Muslim veils and headscarves in public. Here is a look at the issue around the world:
Categories: Americas, Hijab, Islam, Muslim Women's Right
Once again, Muslims of Britain are under the microscope. This time it is the niqab, the face covering worn by many Muslim women. Calls to ban it, have a national debate about it etc are being made by non-Muslims and so called ‘progressive Muslims’ like Yasmin Alibhai Brown. Neither of these two groups of people have any idea why a Muslim woman wears a niqab and proceed with their tirade based on their own assumptions; preaching to Muslims about their own faith. What positive outcome they think they will get out of this; quite how this will promote community cohesion and understanding is beyond anyone. What irony! They Offend Muslims, propose to limit their freedom, and yet still talk about social cohesion and freedom in the same breath. In a country where women have won the right to bare almost everything, we have a proposal to ban people from covering almost everything. People’s freedoms are being limited in the name of emancipating them. The newspaper that has page 3, is campaigning for the niqab ban on page 1. Male MPs want to tell women what they can’t wear; ‘progressive Muslims’ i.e. non-practising Muslims are the new Muslim theologians; and practising Muslims are the extremists.
Muslim scholars have differed on whether or not covering the face is obligatory for women. This is true also of the four famous and currently practised schools of thought. The Hanafi and Maliki schools do not consider covering the face to be Muslims accept both positions as acceptable interpretations. Preference is either based on an academic leaning or based on precaution and prudence. The fact that there is disagreement does not take any matter outside of the pale of the Islamic tradition. On any Islamic issue where there is a difference of opinion, the individual chooses what to do. There is no force or coercion. In the matter of the niqab, many women find it more conducive to Islamic teachings around modesty, chastity, and neutralisation of sexual attraction, and so wear the niqab as a mark of their commitment to these ideals and their piety. It doesn’t even have to mean they consider it obligatory; nor does it mean that those who do not wear the niqab are less chaste or modest. It is about one’s personal feelings about themselves and how they manage their own spirituality. Many of my students know that I do not consider it obligatory. I see them join my classes without the niqab, soon after, they start wearing the niqab. I don’t even know why they did it. Ultimately, it’s their choice and none of my business. But it is religious choice and not a cultural one, which means a woman makes the choice to adopt an Islamic teaching in the hope of being rewarded by Allah (swt). This is the essence of any religious practice.
The idea that women are being forced to wear the niqab is laughable. I’m sure some wear it because their husbands or fathers want them to. But choosing to respect their wishes does not mean they are forced. Maybe the would-be heroes who seek to emancipate niqab-wearing Muslim women should actually talk to niqabi women to find out how they feel rather than excluding them. An act that is so undemocratic, one wonders what kind of government these MPs think they represent. At the root of it is ignorance and arrogance. Ignorance of what the niqab really is about, and arrogance that leads to imposing one’s own views, preferences and anxieties upon the freedoms of others. Whatever happens, Muslims will adapt and we’ll move on. We’ve seen and been through worse. Britain as a whole needs to think carefully about what it stands to lose if it goes down this path. As far as I am concerned, democracy, human rights and liberal values are now being interpreted in a very dubious way. Muslims just have to stick to their principles. We were around before modernity and many other aspects of new-age conventional thinking, we will not be dictated to by it, we have not given in to it like Christianity and other faiths, and indeed we have no need to do so. Furthermore we will be around the day they have moved-on and become unrecognizable to westerners whose ancestors fought for them. It seems they are already moving on, albeit a move backwards
IA
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk